rachelmanija: (Books: old)
rachelmanija ([personal profile] rachelmanija) wrote2025-10-01 06:44 am

The Bewitching & Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia



Three timelines intertwine, connected by witches and women. A grad student in Massachusetts in the 1990s, whose grandmother had a run-in with a witch in the early 1900s in Mexico, researches the mysterious disappearance of a promising woman horror writer in the 1930s.

It's a very nicely constructed, gripping, enjoyable novel of good and evil magic, and women's persistence in the face of what seem to be impossible odds.

Content notes: Cat death.




What it says on the tin: a very gothic-y gothic, set in Mexico. Noemi is a bit of a shallow, selfish debutante in 1950s Mexico. But when she realizes that her cousin who married a wealthy older man may be in trouble in their lavish home in rural Mexico, Noemi sets out to rescue her. She promptly encounters every gothic trope ever, plus a really fun twist on the haunted house/ghost story.

It turns out that being a mean girl debutante used to getting her own way is exactly what's needed to survive this story. I had no end of fun with Noemi bluntly calling out the rule about no talking at dinner, demanding to know exactly what medical treatment her cousin was getting, and generally running roughshod over the creepy atmosphere. A very enjoyable book that I read in a single sitting.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-30 12:22 pm
Entry tags:

September 2025 in Review



21 works reviewed. 11 by women (52%), 9 by men (43%), 1 by non-binary authors (5%), 0 by authors whose gender is unknown (0%), and 8 by POC (38%).

The chart is breaking formatting. Need to fix or remove it. I do like charts, though.

September 2025 in Review
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-29 02:01 pm
Entry tags:

Bundle of Holding: 5E Treasures



A magical hoard for Fifth Edition roleplaying

Bundle of Holding: 5E Treasures
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-29 12:15 pm
Entry tags:

Clarke Award Finalists 2016

2016: The Chilcot Inquiry illustrates the meticulous process by which the UK went to war in Iraq, Lord Lucan is declared dead, and the UK’s narrow vote to leave the EU is at worst the second stupidest collective decision made by a Western democracy in 2016.

Pretend I caught that the poll autofilled the wrong question and that it reads "which 2016 Clarke Award finalists did you read?"

Poll #33672 Clarke Award Finalists 2016
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 47


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
21 (44.7%)

Arcadia by Iain Pears
2 (4.3%)

Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
7 (14.9%)

The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor
11 (23.4%)

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
39 (83.0%)

Way Down Dark by James Smythe
0 (0.0%)



Bold for have read, italic for intend to read, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2016 Clarke Award finalists did you read??
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky
Arcadia by Iain Pears
Europe at Midnight by Dave Hutchinson
The Book of Phoenix by Nnedi Okorafor
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Way Down Dark by James Smythe
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-28 08:37 pm

I don't know what to make of this



The Cherryh titles I dropped into ngram fell into 3 patterns:

Ones whose titles don't play nicely with ngrams. I dropped those.
Ones where the mentions per year decline fairly steadily year to year.
Cyteen. What's up with Cyteen? Did Jo Walton mention it on tor dot com around 2009?
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-27 09:10 am
Entry tags:

Books Received, September 20 — September 26



Six works new to me: four fantasy, one mystery, one non-fiction (from an unexpected source)... unless you count the fantasy-mystery as mystery, in which case it's three fantasy and two mysteries. At least two are series. I don't know why publishers are so averse to labelling series.

Books Received, September 20 — September 26

Poll #33662 Books Received, September 20 — September 26
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 43


Which of these look interesting?

View Answers

An Ordinary Sort of Evil by Kelley Armstrong
12 (27.9%)

Sea of Charms by Sarah Beth Durst (July 2026)
12 (27.9%)

Following My Nose by Alexei Panshin (December 2024)
11 (25.6%)

The Fake Divination Offense by Sara Raasch (May 2026)
7 (16.3%)

The Harvey Girl by Dana Stabenow (February 2026)
8 (18.6%)

Scarlet Morning by ND Stevenson (September 2025)
17 (39.5%)

Some other option (see comments)
1 (2.3%)

Cats!
32 (74.4%)

james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-26 09:17 am

Bound Feet by Kelsea Yu



A grieving mother and her best friend break into a ghost museum to conduct illicit but surely harmless Ghost Day celebrations. Revelations await.

Bound Feet by Kelsea Yu
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-25 10:07 am
Entry tags:

On Writing Romance as Hard Science Fiction



More stories should dig into the chemistry, biology, and physics of falling in love.

On Writing Romance as Hard Science Fiction
asakiyume: (yaksa)
asakiyume ([personal profile] asakiyume) wrote2025-09-25 08:43 am

Saint Death's Daughter

What a breathtaking book Saint Death’s Daughter is. Truly magnificent in all respects: its exciting, imaginative story, its absorbing, immersive worldbuilding, its soaring writing, and its sharp, compassionate observations about human nature. I loved it completely.

It’s been a long time since I walked into a book and lost myself so entirely in it, so much so that I wanted to bring pieces of it back with me into this world. Can we have sothaín meditations, please? Can we have these twelve gods? … But just certain select pieces! Because the other thing about the world of Saint Death’s Daughter is that it’s cheerfully vicious and merciless—not always and everywhere by any means—but plenty enough. Take the fact that our protagonist, Miscellaneous (Lanie) Stones, comes from a family of assassins and torturers. And there are similar people in high places throughout the story. But the folks Lanie’s drawn to are nothing like that at all. We’re more than our family history, and we can make different choices—that’s the grounding hum that vibrates through the story. Lanie sets herself to make amends for the harm her family’s done: tries, fails, and tries again, all while growing into a powerful necromancer with a deep devotion to Doédenna, Saint Death.

There's so much! This is just scratching the surface )

So those are some of my reasons for loving Saint Death’s Daughter. It’s doing so much that it’s impossible to cover it all in a review. Lanie eventually learns to speak with more than one voice at once, with a surface voice and a deeper one (kind of like throat singing, where you sing more than one note at the same time, only Lanie’s deeper voice isn’t audible in the usual way of things). The novel is like this too: it’s speaking in a surface voice and in many other voices as well. It’s broadcasting on many frequencies; you can hear many, many things.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-25 08:53 am

Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack



Amid economic downturn and political strife, young American teen discovers her hidden potential.

Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack
sartorias: (Default)
sartorias ([personal profile] sartorias) wrote2025-09-24 10:28 am
Entry tags:

(no subject)

I'm up here at my sister's, not quite a hundred miles north of home, while the new floors are put in. It's all SoCal, and yet a completely different microclimate. I woke to the tut-tut-tut of some bird we don't ever hear at home, and other chirps and twitters equally unfamiliar. Over that, though, the very familiar caw of crows.

As I did the morning walk with the little dog, and listened to the local crows up in the eucalyptus and pines, I wondered if the crows that follow me at home were watching for me to come. Now that the sun is lowering a bit, we're back to increasing numbers, so I might have thirty or so swirling around me when I throw unsalted peanuts out. so exhilarating to watch them!

Here they don't know me, of course, so the calls can't be to let me know they are there. I'm sure the lives of humans are ignorable, except as annoyances that send them into the trees. I wondered about that sky civilization as I trod the path to the dog park. So much going on at the tops of the trees, that we barely notice!

It's such a relief not to be toiling with packing, though of course unpacking lies in wait to pounce when I get back. Then I'll only have three or four days before I take off for my October east trip, so most of my share of the unloading will await me on my return. The big job (and the fun one) is the library.

Speaking of, since it's Wednesday, let's see, what have I been reading? The Military Philosophers by Anthony Powell, which is part of a book discussion that I've been following since the start of the year. One book a month in Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time series. The discussion happens at the start of each month over Zoom, and what interests me is how folks from either side of the Atlantic read the work. Also, non-genre reading. This time I'll be on the train when the discussion rolls around, so I hope I have connectivity, but if not I'll listen to the recording. At least that way I can skip ahead if the fellow who leads it gets prolix over an obvious point as he has a tendency to do. The academic curse; students above a certain age level are too polite to say 'Zip it! We got the idea already." (High schoolers had no such restraint, and middle schoolers invariably signalled boredom by more physical means.)

Anyway I had the leisure, for the first time in a couple of months, to make chocolate chip cookies. So I can have those and tea and do some reading. Heigh ho, I will go do that now.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-24 09:05 am

Kowloon Generic Romance, volume 2 by Jun Mayuzuki




Realtor Reiko Kujirai has many questions, about her apparent rival and about herself, but very few answers.

Kowloon Generic Romance, volume 2 by Jun Mayuzuki
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-23 04:14 pm
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-23 12:12 pm

WHY

would my Framework charge if plugged into one outlet but not another? I tested the outlet from which it did not charge and it works for other devices.

[Update]

I shut it down for an hour and everything works again.
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-23 10:24 am
Entry tags:
james_davis_nicoll: (Default)
james_davis_nicoll ([personal profile] james_davis_nicoll) wrote2025-09-23 09:11 am

Funny thing about this singer

Youtube pushed a song from this source at me.

I don't think they exist. There are no non-generated images of the singer and their pace of output is suspicious. And their FB bio references ai.